


First Date

by msred



Series: Lessons [2]
Category: American (US) Actor RPF, Marvel Cinematic Universe RPF, Real Person Fiction
Genre: Developing Relationship, F/M, First Dates, Flirting, Fluff, Friendship, Long-Distance Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-19
Updated: 2020-12-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:20:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28160802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/msred/pseuds/msred
Summary: Her leg starts to bounce as the train crosses the Potomac. The next stop is hers and she’s, well, she’s excited, she’s nervous, she’s terrified, frankly. But terrified in a good way. It doesn’t make sense, she knows, but it is what it is.Chris is doing his best to stay calm, and also inconspicuous, knowing the two go hand in hand. It’s not easy though, as excited as he is.
Relationships: Chris Evans (Actor) & Original Female Character(s), Chris Evans (Actor)/Original Female Character(s)
Series: Lessons [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2019040
Comments: 18
Kudos: 38





	First Date

**_June, 2019_ **

Her leg starts to bounce as the train crosses the Potomac. The next stop is hers and she’s, well, she’s excited, she’s nervous, she’s  _ terrified _ , frankly. But terrified in a good way. It doesn’t make sense, she knows, but it is what it is. Her purse falls to the floor (ugh,  _ that’s  _ gross) and the older woman across the aisle from her jumps at the noise. “Sorry,” she says, looking over sheepishly as she picks up her bag and drapes the long strap over her shoulder and across her body, “I’m meeting a man for a first date.”

The woman smiles at her then. “Oh, well, he must be  _ some  _ man, to have you all worked up like this.”

What she wants to say is  _ Oh, you have no idea _ , but what she actually says is, “He’s great. And this has been almost a month in the making. I’m just really excited.”

“Well then, best of luck to you.”

She’s considering how to respond to that when her phone vibrates in her purse, so she just gives the woman a smile and a little wave before she pulls the phone out to check it. It’s from him, and her stomach flips and her heart stutters before she even has it open. It takes her a couple tries to get into her phone - she’s so excited that she keeps typing her passcode in wrong (and she totally forgets that she has facial id) - and when she finally does, there’s no text, just a picture, a selfie of him grinning, wide and sweet, with a poster right behind him that lets her know where to meet him in the station once she gets off the train.

She’d gone back and forth a lot in her own head about the logistics of how this day should go, as far as the whole ‘first date in a city that neither of them lives in’ thing is concerned. He’d told her he would happily leave the decision-making up to her and go along with whatever she wanted, which had been sweet, and she knew he was doing it to make her as comfortable as possible, but it also hadn’t made things any easier. He said that if she just wanted to come up for a few hours and drive back the same day, he would make that work. Or he would get her a room in his hotel, if that’s what she wanted, but one thing she’d been sure of from the beginning was that staying in the same hotel, even if not in the same room, was moving things a little too fast for her. After all, it was, technically, their first date, since she still insisted that their evening in Boston was absolutely not a date but a work-evening for her that he just happened to keep her company for. 

Another issue had been that she just doesn’t love driving in D.C. The insanity of the traffic, between the sheer number of other drivers and the confusing mess of criss-crossing streets, many of them one-way, made her usually manageable anxiety kick into overdrive, setting her on edge and making her probably not that great to be around for a while. So that was a problem in and of itself, since their circumstances pretty much dictated that the date had to happen there.

Finally, she’d decided to get a room in Northern Virginia, within walking distance of the southernmost stop on the D.C. metro. Northern Virginia traffic was nothing to scoff at, but she wouldn’t have to go too far off the interstate, and that didn’t stress her out nearly the way city congestion did. She’d driven up fairly early that morning, much earlier than necessary, considering Chris had meetings until just after lunch. She told herself it was to avoid the worst of the traffic, but it had more to do with wanting to get into her room and have time to collect herself and freshen up after the nearly three-hour drive. (Not that three hours is  _ that  _ long, but the stopover at the hotel had allowed her to drive up in gym shorts and a t-shirt then change into the outfit she’d  _ finally  _ decided on, her favorite floral wrap sundress and low-top Converse the same pink as some of the flowers on the light fabric of her dress, and sweep her hair up into an intentionally messy bun - something that took more time than her normal  _ actual  _ messy buns but less time than the full blow-drying and straightening or curling process that her long, thick hair requires.) Now she’s less than five minutes from the L’Enfant Plaza stop, just a couple blocks south of the National Mall, where he’s apparently already ready and waiting for her, and her heart is ready to beat out of her chest.

When the train stops, she forces herself to stay in her seat and let others around her get off first, needing a minute to catch her breath and try to slow the frantic beating of her heart. Just as she’s about to stand, her eyes closed and pulling in a long, deep breath through her nose, she feels a light touch on her shoulder. She looks over and up and the woman she’d spoken to before is smiling down at her. “Have fun,” the woman says, “but you make sure that boy knows how lucky he is to have your company.” For some reason, that breaks something loose in Her. She exhales, feeling much lighter than before, and smiles back at the woman, nodding as she stands once the older woman’s hand is no longer on her shoulder.

Chris is doing his best to stay calm, and also inconspicuous, knowing the two go hand in hand. It’s not easy though, as excited as he is. He’d really liked her when they’d spent time together in Boston. She was kind, and funny, in a very sarcastic, self-deprecating way, which is his favorite type of humor, and definitely nice to look at. But they’ve spent the last three weeks texting daily (several times a day, for the past week or so) and talking a couple times a week, and man, he’s pretty sure he’s crazy about this girl. So by the time the train comes to a complete stop on the tracks in front of him, he’s very nearly bouncing on the balls of his feet and has shoved his hands into his pockets to keep them from wringing in front of him. He scans the crowd as best he can as the doors open and passengers flood out, but he doesn’t even know which part of the train she’s on, so he’s not having a lot of luck.

Then, while he’s looking in the complete wrong direction, she just kind of appears in front of him, and, “Wow. You look …  _ really  _ good.” She does, too. Casual, comfortable, easy, but really, really good, like she feels good in her own skin. “Like I said before, great range.”

She feels herself blushing, but manages a mostly confident, “Thanks. You look amazing too, but what’s new?”

He rolls his eyes but keeps his smile firmly in place as he extends an arm toward her, and she steps into the arc of it like it’s the most natural thing in the world, so he drops his hand to curl around her waist and bends to press a kiss to her cheek. “How was your commute?” he asks as he starts to pull away, not putting actual distance between them, and  _ not  _ removing his arm from around her waist, but standing up straighter and nodding toward the nearest stairwell. “Everything go smoothly?” He’d been in meetings and interviews for most of the day, with just enough time between his last one and now to get back to his room and change clothes then get here to meet her, so they’d exchanged very few messages - just one from her to let him know that she’d made it safely to her hotel then the picture he’d sent to let her know where he was waiting for her.

“Yep,” she nods and lets him guide her toward the exit. “I hit a little traffic outside Richmond, but everything else was good.”

“Good.” They emerge into the sunshine of the early summer afternoon and he slides his hand back across her lower back to rest on his own hip, the other one already doing the same on the opposite side. “Well,” he says, turning a little to one side then to the other, “now what? Did you have anything in mind?”

She does, actually. She hasn’t spent nearly as much time in the city as he has, thanks to all the prep work he and Mark have been doing for their political website project, but she’d done some research because she had an idea he might ask for her input. It would have also been fine if he  _ hadn’t  _ asked, if he’d just planned the day, but she didn’t want to be a deer in the headlights if he put the ball in her court. Which he has. (And he won’t tell her this, not yet, anyway, but he’d also planned out the day in full, just in case she hadn’t had anything she wanted to do, but he wanted to give her some say first.) “The Air and Space Museum is close, right?”

His face lights up and  _ yes _ , that’s exactly what she was going for. Because sure, the subject matter is mildly interesting to her (though her next suggestion, if he asks for one, will be the Hirshhorn), but she knows how he is about all things space (there’s his Twitter, of course, but on top of that, she’d mentioned that she lives near a NASA research center during one of their phone conversations and his voice had risen about three octaves in his excitement) and she really just wants to see his passion, his excitement, firsthand. 

“Yeah, definitely! I,” and he pauses, reigns himself in just a little bit to say, “I mean, if you’re sure that’s what you want to do.”

She smiles, and how is he already so crazy about that smile? “I think that’s a good place to start,” she says, hooking her hand into the crook of his elbow. And  _ oh  _ she’s cute, she’s so fucking cute it’s dangerous.

She doesn’t even pretend, as they move through the exhibits, that she’s not paying more attention to him than to the displays in front of them. It’s exactly like she’d hoped it would be. If it was humanly possible for actual stars to shine in his eyes (ha, stars!), they would be, and they never make it more than a couple displays before he’s telling her at least two, three times as much about whatever it is they’re looking at than what is on the information placard, one hand flying all over the place, gesticulating wildly, the other staying very still on his stomach so as to avoid dislodging her hand where it’s still curled around his arm. Eventually, when they’ve got two exhibit halls left to explore, his arm flies past his own face and he does a double-take, stopping to gape at his watch. “Shit,” he mutters, then looks at her with wide eyes, “we’ve been here for over three hours.”

She giggles a little. “That’s okay.”

“No, I mean, I didn’t mean for this to take the whole day.” He looks sheepish, “I know you suggested this for me, and I went along with it because I figured we’d go somewhere else after.”

She blinks up at him and bites at her bottom lip and she really is going to be the death of him. “I’m in no hurry.”

“No?” She just shakes her head and he lets his eyes scan the room, just for a second, then leans over to kiss her hair just above her ear. “Well, we’re just about done here, I think, then maybe we can hit up one more place before dinner? If you planned to stay for dinner?” She’s beaming when she nods. “I was thinking maybe the Hirshhorn?” 

Wait, did she say that out loud before? She’s nearly certain she didn’t. 

“It’s nearby and I think you’d really like a lot of the stuff there. It’s more contemporary than the National Gallery of Art.” All she can do is blink and smile, because what she really wants to do is grab him by the neck and kiss him, but it’s  _ so  _ not the right time or place. He seems a little concerned by her silence, though, because he asks, “Or am I making a leap there? I just figured, you’re really into literature, theatre, I thought you’d enjoy the art.”

“Not a leap,” she assures him. “That sounds perfect. As soon as we’re done here, and don’t you dare rush through on my account.”

He does seem to move them through the last couple exhibits a bit faster than all the ones up to that point, but it’s not obvious enough that she calls him out on it. When they’re back out on the Mall, he reaches across his body to lift her hand off his arm with his opposite hand so that he can drape that arm across her shoulders as they walk the relatively short distance to the art museum. Then, and god, he hates to do it, because he loves the way she fits against him, loves the way he can feel her laugh when he says something expressly for that purpose, as they approach the Hirshhorn, he moves his arm so that it hangs between them and he can link their fingers together. 

Once they’re inside, moving from one piece of art to another, he gets a taste of how she must have felt before, because while she doesn’t give him a 10-minute lecture on every third painting, or photograph, or sculpture, her face is lit from within and her eyes sparkle and her joy is palpable. And he, well, to be blunt, he fucking loves it. He makes a mental note of the things she seems to be enjoying the most (photographs, cool color palettes, things that are modern and abstract but still with a discernible theme or emotion) to file away for possible future use. But then they find themselves in front of an abstract painting that appears suspiciously similar to male genitalia, whether or not that’s the intent, and he can’t stop himself from leaning down to whisper a ridiculous, crass joke in her ear. She tightens her fingers around his and turns to press her face into his upper arm as she shakes with barely contained laughter. And he realizes that, though he hadn’t consciously meant it to be one at the time, he’s just inadvertently given her a test. It’s good to know that this beautiful, sweet, intelligent woman isn’t going to be turned off by his 12-year-old boy sense of humor or the fact he can drop anywhere from two to 10 curse words in one short conversation without even realizing it.

He reaches across both their bodies to curl his hand around the back of her head and leans down to press his own face into the top of her head where her hair’s pulled back. When she stops giggling, she moves to pull back and he lets her go, grinning down at her as she smiles, all pink cheeks and dancing eyes, back up at him. He could get used to this, he thinks, that look, the way her hand fits, small and delicate-feeling but strong, in his, the fact that he feels like a king when he makes her laugh or smile or when she talks to him in that soft, quiet voice that tells him she’s feeling something.

She gets him back for his dirty joke when they’re in the sculpture garden. They’re standing in front of Rodin’s ‘Walking Man’ sculpture when she turns and pushes up onto her toes just until she can comfortably rest her chin on his shoulder, and that’s when she makes a comment, just barely above a whisper, about the statue’s physique, followed by one about his own body (he feels his neck burn when the words  _ America’s Ass  _ leave her lips). Thank god they’re outside the museum now, because his head falls back and his hand flies to his chest and he outright cackles. Add being a handful to the things that he really likes about her. When he’s stopped laughing, he looks down at her, one eyebrow raised, and says, “You’re trouble.” She just winks. “Though, I gotta say,” he starts as they move toward the next installation, “I’m  _ in  _ trouble if that’s,” he ticks his head back toward the sculpture they’ve just walked away from, “your point for comparison.”

“Trust me,” she tells him as she lets her head fall a little to the side until her temple rests on the side of his shoulder, “I’m not worried.” And he doesn’t know what kind of timeline they’re talking about here or anything, he certainly didn’t come into this date expecting it to end with sex, but just the vague reference to her eventually getting her eyes - and hands, hopefully,  _ god  _ he hopes - on the parts of his body that the sculpture so proudly displays, the parts of his body that have been covered by his clothes each time he’s been with her so far, has some of his blood rushing south.

They’ve all but stopped on the walkway leading from one sculpture to the next, taking one small, leisurely step at a time and stepping aside when an older couple approaches from behind. He bumps her shoulder a little with his. “Well, I just hope you’re not expecting Steve Rogers under here,” he gestures to his polo shirt, moving his free hand, held out a few inches in front of his torso, from his waist to his shoulders and back down.

She comes to a full stop and looks up at him. “I don’t want Steve Rogers,” she blinks, her expression open and earnest. “I want you.” She doesn’t know what’s gotten into her, honestly. She’s not normally so … bold. She’s not meek, by any means, but she usually makes sure she knows people a little better before she shows her full self - full of love and empathy but also snarky, sarcastic, even a little crass, and yeah, someone who is pretty aware of her own desires and willing to go after them when the time and place are right - so openly. She’s not sure why that normal self-preservation instinct to hold something back has all but disappeared with him, but she also doesn’t think he minds, if his reactions to her openness are any indication. Like the way he’s looking at her now, one eyebrow quirked high on his forehead and a smirk tugging at one side of his mouth - that feels like a good look.

“Is that so?”

She nods. Then she swallows, because this feels like a really appropriate time to say something that she knows she needs to say but has been trying to figure out how to. She’s still not sure she’s going to say it well, but she’s going to say it. “But, not tonight.” That eyebrow stays up, but the smirk transitions to more of a confused purse of his lips. “I’m not going to have sex with you tonight.”

His eyes go wide and he kind of nods, his mouth opening and closing a few times before he finally gets out, “Yeah, no, I didn’t,” she sees his adam’s apple bob as he swallows heavily, “did you think I expected that?”

“No,” she says honestly, shaking her head and squeezing his hand. “I didn’t think you  _ expected  _ anything. You’ve been lovely.” She pushes up to kiss his cheek, just above where his beard begins, for good measure. “I just wanted to say it, for me. I thought it might help avoid some awkwardness later.” She rolls her eyes. “Of course, it kinda seems like all I did was move the awkwardness to  _ now,  _ but -” she stops talking when he shakes his head emphatically and pulls her a little closer by the hand he still holds.

“Not awkward, direct.” He drops her hand and moves both hands to her hips, “Direct is good.” He holds her still by her hips and steps forward until he’s crowding her personal space. “Kissing is still on the table though, right?”

She grins, because  _ yes _ , she very much wants to kiss him some more (all the cheek and head kisses throughout the day have been nice, very nice, and very sweet, but she’s definitely looking forward to more), and also because he just keeps proving her right about the whole ‘safe not to hold back’ thing. “Oh yes,” she tells him, “right smack dab in the middle of the table. In fact,” she rests her hands on his ribs like she had the first time she’d kissed him then slides them up, over his wide, thick chest and onto his even wider shoulders, “I think you owe me.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yep. You promised me a third.”

He hums, then makes a show of looking around the garden. “Do you think it would be disrespectful to the art if I made good on that right here?” 

“I think we can get by with it.”

He tugs her closer, until the length of her body is pressed to his and his fingers sink into her hips. She tilts her head back, watching this time as he closes the distance between them, only letting her eyes flutter closed when his lips meet hers. He still makes no attempt to open her mouth to him, but he presses into the kiss more firmly than he had that night outside the theatre, and just before he pulls away he traces the swell of her bottom lip with the tip of his tongue.

“Is my debt paid?” he asks, just a couple inches from her mouth.

“For now,” she answers, smirking, and he grins as he steps back out of her bubble.

Several minutes later, once they’ve viewed every sculpture in the garden and are making their way out and back toward the Mall, he asks what she wants for dinner. “You like pizza?” she asks as her form of an answer, pretty sure she already knows that he does.

His eyes light up and he looks a little like that’s not what he expected her to say but that he likes it. (And that’s exactly what she was going for. It would have been so easy to ask him to take her somewhere fancy, extravagant; she knows he can afford it and that he’s used to that sort of thing. She didn’t want to do that, though, wanted to ask the same of him that she would have asked of anyone else on a first date. Besides, pizza’s awesome, so win-win.) “I love pizza. The more toppings the better as far as I’m concerned.” 

“Great. You’re here more than I am, know any place good?”

“I do, actually,” he tells her, then turns them in the right direction and starts walking.

It’s funny, it’s been a long time since he met anyone new outside his business who didn’t treat him as something special simply  _ because  _ of his business. And it’s not exactly fair to say that she doesn’t treat him like anything special, because what she does is make him feel really, really special. But she makes him feel that way because of the interest she shows in him, and her willingness to open up to him. She makes him feel special in a way that has absolutely nothing to do with  _ Captain America _ .

Once they’re at the pizzeria and he’s had her order for them (he knows he’s got a bit of a power advantage here, for a few reasons, so he’s trying to hand the reins over to her any time he can, even if it’s small) and the server has brought their drinks and she’s teasing him that,  _ See, I told you I enjoyed an adult beverage from time to time  _ as she tilts her beer toward him, he seizes the opportunity she just provided to try to get her to open up even more. “You did. And what else can you tell me about you? I feel like I’m coming in at a major disadvantage here, you know way more about me than I do you.”

“Ahh,” she takes a sip of her beer and leans into her elbows and forearms on top of the table, “but how much of that is  _ actually  _ true?” He just tilts his head a little side-to-side because, okay, fair. But still, enough of it is true that he’s not wrong in his assessment of the situation. “Besides, I told you plenty about me when we were in Boston.”

“Fine. What can you tell me about you that has nothing to do with your work or your students?”

She opens her mouth to shut him down again, then freezes. Because, shit. He’s right. She felt like she’d told him a lot about herself, but it really had all been about school, aside from their very brief conversation about where she’d gone to school and why. So she regains her composure and says, “Fine. What would you like to know?”

“Well,” he reaches across the table to play with her fingers, “what’s your family like? You’ve met most of mine already, so that seems like a fair place to start.”

And okay, he’s not wrong. That’s a perfectly fair place to start. She just wishes it wasn’t where he  _ wanted  _ to start. There’s nothing wrong with her family, exactly. It’s just that, well, it’s not exactly ‘traditional.’ And his family is so wonderful, so damn near perfect. But, she hasn’t lost anything by being open and honest with him so far, so she knows she doesn’t need to change that now. “Well, it’s really just my mom and my brother and me. I had really, really wonderful grandparents, but they passed away a few years ago.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” he says, and it sounds incredibly sincere. She’s not sure whether that makes her feel special, because he pretty much always sounds incredibly sincere, but it does make her feel comfortable.

She nods. “My grandmother was pretty much the best person in my world. Anyway,” she goes on quickly, because she can feel the tightness in her chest and she doesn’t want to do  _ that  _ on their first date, “my dad was never in the picture, so aside from my grandparents, it was just my mom and me, then my brother came along, the same way I did, and,” she shrugs, “baby makes three.” As she’s trying to figure out just how much to share on the first date, she spots their server out of the corner of her eye, exiting the kitchen with their pizza, if the way she makes eye contact and smiles is any indication.

She squeezes Chris’s hand where he’d linked their fingers together over the table and nods in the direction of the approaching server. He pulls his hand back when he spots her and clears the space at the center of the table so she has a place to put the pizza. Once she’s gone again and they both have slices on their plates and she’s picking off the olives (he’d told the server to leave the mushrooms off her half, which he must have remembered from their dinner together in Boston, but she’d never mentioned anything about olives; she’d ordered the pizza knowing they were on there and was prepared to pick them off), Chris picks the conversation right back up where they’d left off, which she was kind of hoping he wasn’t going to do. “So, are the three of you really close, then, since it was just you?”

She shrugs one shoulder and pops a pepperoni into her mouth, “Not exactly. My mom worked a lot. My grandparents stepped up a lot for the first five years or so, then I just kind of took over. My mom and I never really developed that mother-daughter bond that most have, I’m sure your sisters and your mom do,” he looks a little guilty as he nods, “because we never really got to  _ be  _ mother and daughter, in that sense.” She tears off just the point of her slice of pizza to test it. The cheese was practically still bubbling when the server brought it out, so she knows better than to try to take a full bite. It’s still hotter than she would like (she notices he hasn’t really dived in yet either, and she doesn’t know if it’s for that same reason or just because he’s been listening to her), so she decides to give it another couple minutes and and takes a long pull from her beer instead, letting the amber liquid pass over her lips and tongue slowly so that she can draw out the action without drinking half the beer in one swig.

He’s not asking her for more, and she knows if she wanted to, she could stop right there.. It’s always touchy, having this conversation with men that she’s seeing. She’d tried, with past boyfriends (not that she’s calling Chris a boyfriend, god, they’re on their first date, for Christ’s sake), but reactions were lukewarm, at best. (A couple times she’d gotten something like pity, and one asshole had actually thought her mom made a good punchline - needless to say that relationship never really got off the ground.) A couple boyfriends in her early- to mid-20s had even met her mom, but the thing is, her mom never got to live the life that She’s had, never got to be young and single and independent, and as a result, she’s a little too invested now in Her life, almost like she’s trying to live vicariously through her. It’s not weird or creepy or anything like that, she doesn’t actually want to  _ be with _ any of Her boyfriends, but she can be overbearing, too much for said boyfriends to handle in her investment in Her life.

Anyway, as she was thinking, she could stop right here and call it a night on the family history. He wouldn’t push, and she knows it. But she actually likes telling him. Well,  _ likes  _ is maybe a bit of a strong word, but she certainly doesn’t  _ dislike  _ it, doesn’t dislike the way he’s still just looking at her with pure interest in what she’s saying rather than like he’s making some kind of judgment in his mind, doesn’t dislike the way that, the second he’d pulled his hand from hers to make room for the pizza, he’d stretched one leg a little farther under the table to hook his foot around her ankle, maintaining contact between them. She’s comfortable, unafraid. So she goes on. 

“As far as my brother,” just for a second he looks pleasantly surprised, and she realizes he’d expected her to stop, “I was about four and a half when he was born, and from about the time I was 10 or so on, I was, in a lot of ways, his mom-figure, the main care-giver There was usually a baby sitter around, I was too young to be in charge of both of us with no adult supervision, but I was the one helping him with school work, making sure he didn’t do things he wasn’t supposed to do, even taking care of our meals, half the time.”

“So you’ve been an adult since you were like 10.” His voice is soft, gentle, and it wraps around her like a blanket. She likes that he didn’t say it as a question, that might have made her feel like he was judging, like he couldn’t believe that had been her life. Instead it sounds more like a reassurance, somehow.

She nods. “And it worked, believe it or not, for about the next five years. I mean, that was my life, I didn’t know any different. Then when my brother was about 10 he started to resent being mommed by his sister. I became very well-acquainted with the phrase  _ You’re not my mom _ .” Chris scoffs and she finally takes an actual bite of her pizza. And oh, it’s so, so good. She’ll have to remember to tell him that later, since he’d suggested the place. As soon as she swallows she continues, determined to get this done and over with. “Then when he was 12 or so, just before I graduated high school, his dad came back into the picture part-time and, well, let’s just say at that point I got very well-acquainted with the phrase  _ I’m not letting some girl tell me what to do _ .” Chris outwardly flinches at that. It actually makes her smile, because she already knew how he views women, how much respect he has, but it’s nice to actually see that in regards to her. “So anyway,” she shrugs, “we never really fully recovered from that.”

Chris’s jaw ticks and she just wants to be done with this. Wants this conversation to be over so they can, hopefully, if she hasn’t ruined the whole date at this point, move on, get back on more pleasant footing, back to where they were before she started telling him all this. So she takes a deep breath, determined to get through the next few sentences as quickly as possible, and, god-willing (and Chris-willing), change the subject. “So now, my mom and I are more like friends, or sisters. We have a good relationship, but it’s not mother-daughter at all. And my brother and I, well, we’re family members who see each other on holidays and can carry on a civil conversation, even share a couple laughs here and there, but who are also happy to go our separate ways at the end of dinner. I don’t blame my mom, don’t hold anything against her, she did what she had to do to keep a roof over my head and food in my belly and books in front of my eyes. It just,” she lifts one shoulder, “is what it is.”

He just looks at her for a long moment, his elbow resting on the table and his beer held nearly in front of his face. Finally, he takes a drink and lowers it back to the table then says, “Thanks for telling me all that.”

She shrugs, “You asked.”

“Yeah, but you didn’t have to share that much. I’m glad you did.” He is, too. He’s glad to know about her, but even more than that he’s glad that she felt comfortable sharing it with him. He’s not sure why he thinks this, but he has the feeling it’s not something she shares with many people. He’s really, really glad he’s one of them. He’s also not going to push his luck, though. He’s pretty sure that she’d answer anything else he asked, but this is a date, not an interrogation. Besides, if he has it his way, there will be plenty of time to learn more as they go along. So, he smirks a little and says, as he’s pulling another slice of pizza from the baking sheet, “But now, time for the  _ really  _ important question,” her eyes go wide and she lowers her pizza, which she’d just lifted off her plate, and he nods toward her still half-full glass, “are you gonna finish that in time to have another one? There’s a really good local one you should try next if so.”

Her eyes light up and she grins as she tells him she thinks she can make that happen. (She doesn’t, they get to talking again as they eat and she doesn’t drink quickly enough to order a second beer, but he orders one for himself and keeps pushing it across the table for her to take sips of.)

By the time they’ve finished eating, the sun is starting to set and they head back through President’s Park and toward the Mall. They make no specific plans this time, just walking together and talking about everything and nothing. She does have a moment of panic as they approach the Washington Monument and he suggests going up to see the lights of the city and the reflections on the rivers outlining it. She tells herself that she can handle it, that her fear (her deathly, paralyzing phobia, really) of heights shouldn’t stop him from getting to enjoy the view, but even as she repeats to herself over and over that she will be fine, her heart speeds up and her breathing goes shallow and she’s sure he can feel her palm sweating in his. Just as her better sense is about to win out and she’s about to tell him that she doesn’t think she can do it, he shrugs and says, “You know what, nevermind. It’s just going to take up a bunch of time and probably be crowded. This is nicer.” He squeezes her hand and pulls her a little closer to lean down and kiss the top of her head. 

They work their way through the memorials lining either side of the Mall between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial and just as they’re emerging from the sea of statues that make up the Korean War Veterans Memorial, Chris spots a line of food trucks along Independence Avenue, between the Mall and West Potomac Park. Right in the middle of the line is the artisan ice cream truck he’s fallen in love with. Honestly, he’s pretty much incapable of passing it by without ordering something, at this point. “Hey,” he says, grinning down at her when she tilts her head up to look at him, “how about dessert?” He nods toward the truck.

“Sure!” she answers, and before the word is even all the way out of her mouth he’s pulling her in that direction.

Not even five minutes later, they’re sitting on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, ice cream cones in hand, looking out over the reflecting pool. “I can’t believe,” he says between licks (and she’s trying so, so hard to keep her eyes on her own ice cream and not the way his tongue looks sliding over his), “that they have all those fancy-ass flavors and you ordered strawberry.” 

She just shrugs as she watches him pluck a piece of graham cracker from his something-something-grilled-smores-whatever. “Strawberry ice cream in the summertime is a classic. It’s pretty impossible to beat. It’s sweet cream and tart berries and it tastes like childhood and happiness.”

“Okay, well, when you put it  _ that  _ way,” he eyes her cone a little enviously and she giggles as she holds it out toward him and he deliberates for only a second before closing his lips over just the very top of it. He hums and nods because, yeah, she has a point, actually, then holds his own cone toward her and she just shakes her head. “Right,” he says, “not a big fan of chocolate.” And he doesn’t even remember exactly when or why she told him that, but he knows she did, and his ice cream has a heavy fudge stripe running through it.

They don’t say much for the next few minutes, just sitting in companionable silence as the sun sets behind them and they watch the reflection of it in the pool, her head on his shoulder and her free hand on his knee as his arm hooks around her back and his hand runs lightly up and down her spine while they finish off their treats. When her ice cream is completely gone (his has been for a few minutes already), she drops that hand to her own lap and fiddles with the hem of her dress. “I’ve had a really, really good day,” she tells him, her eyes watching her fingers as they flit over the fabric.

He nudges her to the side so she sits up straight, dropping his hand to curl around her waist in the process, then kisses her temple before resting his forehead there. “Me too.” His thumb drifts over her hipbone over the fabric of her dress. “Think we could do it again?”

She turns to look at him and her eyes dance over his face and he swears it’s hope that he sees there. “Are you coming back to D.C. soon?”

“Not exactly.” He is coming back, toward the end of July, but he doesn’t want to wait that long to see her again. “I was hoping maybe you’d feel like coming back to Massachusetts, seeing some things that aren’t within walking distance of downtown Boston.” He brushes back a wisp of hair that’s come loose from her bun, just over her ear where her head had rested on his shoulder. “Like me,” he adds, giving her his best cheesy grin.

“Wow. That’s,” she trails off and it makes him nervous, makes him feel like he needs to give more explanation.

“I get it if you’re not comfortable actually staying with me. I’ve already talked to Shanna and she’s more than okay with you staying with her, if you prefer. Or a hotel, if you really want,” he knows he’s rambling a little, “but I promise if you stay with my sister I’ll give you as much distance as you want, and no matter where you stay, I’ll totally respect your space and your boundaries. It’s whatever you want, really. I just want to see you again.”

“I want to see you too,” she tells him softly, and he can hear the  _ but  _ that she doesn’t say.

“I’m more than happy to cover your plane ticket.”

“Oh,” she sits up a little straighter, “Chris, I don’t know about that. That’s big, financially.”

He’s ready for this. “Hear me out, okay?” She nods. “How big something is, financially, is all relative. I don’t mean to sound presumptive or anything, but where the cost of a plane ticket is probably a kind of big purchase for you, for most people, maybe even something you would normally need to plan for, for me it’s, well, it’s  _ not _ . God, I sound like a douche, don’t I, talking about money?”

She shakes her head and smiles sweetly, “You certainly do not sound like a douche." If it were anyone else, talking about how much money they have - specifically how much  _ more  _ money they have compared to her - yeah, they'd sound like a douche. But not him, with those sincere eyes and that hope in his voice and the way his hand has stopped moving over her side, just sort of clenching and loosening on her hip. "But, I just, I don’t know if I feel right accepting that. It’s like I’d owe you something then. Not that I think that’s why you’re offering, I know better, but still.”

“I get it. But it wouldn’t be like that at all. At the risk of sounding like a pretentious ass, again, covering your plane ticket wouldn’t really be an expense for me any more than you, I don’t know, buying a friend lunch or something.” He can tell she’s softening, so he goes on quickly. “ _ And _ , if you’re not okay with it, I’m just going to ask if I can come see you instead, and then I’ll be buying my own plane ticket, and I’m not going to invite myself to stay at your place, so I’ll have to get a hotel too. So if you let me do this, you’re actually doing me a favor.” She lets her head drop and he bends down until he can look up at her through his lashes. “So?” She blinks back at him and he actually bats his eyelashes. She rolls her eyes and sighs, but the corners of her mouth pull up into a smile at the same time. “Yeah?”

“I’m not sure where I want to stay yet, so keep your sister on standby.”

He wraps his arm a little tighter around her and plants a slightly sloppy kiss on her cheek. “Yes, of course, whatever you want.”

They talk for a few more minutes, he’s excited to tell her all the things he wants to do with her when they have more time, all the things he wants to show her when she comes to visit him, how he can’t wait for her to meet Dodger, the Fourth of July party his family hosts that he wants to take her to, and she’s so caught up in it all that she doesn’t realize how late it is until the sun is completely gone and the moon is coming up over the Washington Monument. She lets him finish what he’s saying ( _ Does she like swimming? Because he’s got a great pool where they can waste away an afternoon or two or three)  _ then gives him a sad smile and says, “I’m really looking forward to that, but right now, I hate to say this -”

“I know,” he nods. “I’ve been trying to pretend it’s not as late as it is, but I know you need to go.” He slides his hand to the center of her back then up her spine to curl around her neck, his thumb tracing small circles behind her ear, then pushes himself to standing with his other hand on the step. He lets his hand hang between them, palm up for her to nestle her hand into. As he helps her to standing, he adds, “The rental car Mark and I are sharing is parked in a garage just a few blocks that way,” he tilts his head toward the other side of the Lincoln Memorial.  
She shakes her head. “That’s not necessary, I’ll just take the train back.” He levels her with probably the most serious look she’s ever seen on him in person. “Chris. I’m a big girl. I rode the train here, I can ride it back.”

“Look, there’s independent and self-sufficient, and then there’s stubborn. I know you are clearly very capable of taking care of yourself. I also know there’s no way I’m letting you get on that train by yourself at this time of night. It’s not about how capable you are, it’s about crime rates and common sense.” She stares up at him, abashed. “So, sweetheart,” her stomach flips at the pet name, even though she knows he’s using it sarcastically, “you have two choices. Either you can insist on riding the train, in which case I will be on the other end of the car the entire time, or you can let me drive you, and we can call it extending our date by 30 minutes. Take your pick.”  
“When you put it that way,” she concedes and he lifts her hand to his lips.

She looks at the car’s clock when they pull into the hotel parking lot, coming to a stop in the empty spot right next to her own car, and she knows the drive really was the 30 minutes he predicted it would be, but she swears it doesn’t feel like a second over five. She just, she feels  _ good  _ with him, happy, light. “Thank you for the ride,” she says, softly.

“Of course. Thank you for not making me be a weird stalker on the train.” She laughs a little and looks down at their hands on the console between them, his palm up as her fingers run lightly over his. Without thinking too much about it, her brain quiet for once and letting her body take over, she undoes the seatbelt with her other hand and shrugs out of it then reaches across him to curl her hand around his neck.

He takes the action for the invitation that it is and turns toward her, lifting his own hand to cup her cheek as they both move in to close the distance between them. She sighs as their lips meet, hers parted by the breath that escapes her, and he’s bolder than any of the previous times they’ve kissed, slipping his tongue carefully into her mouth. She doesn’t seem to mind, based on the way she tightens her hand around his neck and lets out a quiet whimper. He slides his tongue slowly over hers, making note of the way it feels, the way she tastes, then withdraws it, only for her to chase him and do the same back to him. 

They continue that way, lips and tongues moving gently but ever more boldly, tasting and exploring, until her hand has slipped down the side of his neck to fist the collar of his shirt in her palm and his fingers are tracing the ridges of her collarbone. She pulls away with a gasp, just far enough to say, “You are dangerously good at that.”

“Dangerously?” he asks, his chest heaving, eyes flitting between hers then falling back to her lips.

She nods. “We keep that up much longer and I’m going to forget all the reasons I know I shouldn’t sleep with you on the first date.”

He leans in to kiss her again, tugging on her bottom lip for just a second, then rests his forehead against hers. “Well in that case, you’re pretty lethal yourself.” He kisses her nose then pulls back farther, swiping his thumb gingerly under her bottom lip. “But I won’t let that happen.” She tilts her head a little to one side and looks at him, confused. “You said no earlier, and while it’s always okay to say yes then change it to a no, I’m not going to let you change a no to a yes. You said no for a reason, and if you change that now, you’re likely to regret it. And I don’t want you to regret anything about today, or about me.”

She wants to scream that there is no way in hell that she could regret  _ him _ , to climb over the console and into his lap and push her hands under his shirt to feel his muscles twitch and contract as she runs her hands over every inch of skin she can get to. But she knows he’s not entirely wrong, at least not about not going from a no to a yes, not for the first time, not before they know each other well enough for him to know that she means the new 'yes' more than the old 'no,' and she also knows that they’ve made plans to see each other again. If this is going to happen, it'll happen, there’s no rush. Well, there’s not  _ this  _ much of a rush, anyway. So instead she says, “I don’t want that either,” and lets him kiss her again, soft and sweet and chaste.

“Is it okay if I just walk you to the elevator and not all the way to your room?” he asks, his thumb sliding back and forth along her jaw from where his hand has settled at the juncture of her neck and shoulder. “It’s one thing to talk all noble and shit out here, it’d be a much bigger challenge to just walk away when I’ve got you standing in front of an empty hotel room. Not that I - I can control myself, I wouldn’t do anything you didn’t want me to, but if I’m not careful I’ll spend the whole night in there kissing you, and I’ve got Senators to interview tomorrow, so sleep is good.”

She chuckles even as her cheeks burn. “You don’t have to do either,” she assures him. She slides her hand from his shoulder, where she’s smoothed his shirt collar again after gripping it so tightly, down his chest and lets it rest on his ribs. “I can really take it from here.”  
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he scoffs, “the least I can do is walk you into the building and to the elevator.”

She wants to tell him that the  _ least  _ he could have done would have been to walk her to the train station and make sure she got safely on the next train back to the hotel. They’re way past ‘least.’ But if she’s learned one thing, it’s that it’s pointless to argue with him, especially about something like this. So what she actually says is, “The elevator will be great, then.”

And when they get there, after walking as stealthily through the lobby as possible, his head down even as he holds her close and whispers in her ear to keep her distracted from anyone who might be looking their way ( _ You know, that strawberry ice cream tastes even better secondhand) _ , he steps in just long enough for one more lingering kiss, his tongue sweeping through her mouth for just a second, then throws his hand between the closing doors and backs out with a wink, leaving her there alone, with tingling lips and shaking legs and the thought that her trip to Massachusetts can’t come fast enough.


End file.
